NewportBarGuy:I think that is a good example of how the free market weeds out some seriously funky designs. With notable exceptions of Gehry and the like... We mostly have boring, utilitarian buildings.

If you survived the wars and purges and were an architect, you probably could have built whatever the hell you wanted, given the right circumstances.

To be fair, there was a lot of boring, utilitarian buildings in the former U.S.S.R. as well.

NewportBarGuy:coco ebert: To be fair, there was a lot of boring, utilitarian buildings in the former U.S.S.R. as well.

They probably killed so many architects and engineers they had the janitors design those concrete coffins. We don't do much better with public housing.

Heh. Funnily enough, that type of large, modern public housing concept at the time was considered very forward-thinking, because it also included a lot of parks and public spaces to congregate (Le Corbusier and his type of architecture) and sought to end the tenement style housing of modernizing cities. That's kind of frowned upon now.

We could probably come up with 14 buildings in the U.S. that are equally unique. And there are just as many boring utilitarian buildings in the US and former Soviet Republic. There were some cool buildings though.

titwrench:We could probably come up with 14 buildings in the U.S. that are equally unique. And there are just as many boring utilitarian buildings in the US and former Soviet Republic. There were some cool buildings though.

The difference is that most of the time, people KNOW about these. The ones in Russia(And former Soviet states) are kinda hidden gems.

Cthulhu_is_my_homeboy:NewportBarGuy: If you survived the wars and purges and were an architect, you probably could have built whatever the hell you wanted, given the right circumstances the Party wanted.